Photos: Recovering Soyuz

Touching down on the snowy steppes of central Kazakhstan, three space station residents returned to Earth on Monday aboard a Russian Soyuz capsule after five-and-a-half months in orbit.

The Soyuz made a rocket-assisted landing at 9:26 p.m. EST Monday (0226 GMT), or 8:26 a.m. local time in Kazakhstan.

NASA photographer Bill Ingalls rode along with the Soyuz landing team to retrieve the three-man crew from the Soyuz. Aboard the capsule were space station commander Mike Fossum, Russian cosmonaut Sergei Volkov and Japanese crew member Satoshi Furukawa.